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Table of Contents

The following guide outlines how to play N'Zoth Control Warrior. Control Warrior
is one of the oldest archetypes in all of Hearthstone and N'Zoth gives it a new
dimension that allows it to play more proactively for board dominance. It is an
excellent deck at both playing reactively to answer your opponent's threats, as
well as playing proactively to pressure your opponent.

1. About the Author

This deck is presented to you by Sottle,
a professional Hearthstone player who plays for compLexity Gaming.
Sottle regularly streams on Twitch and explains all of his moves. Watching him is a good opportunity to see how
this and other decks play out in practice, and how decisions are made in real time.

2.1. Mana Curve

0

2

7

7

4

4

3

3

3. Strategy

N'Zoth Control Warrior is a reactive deck designed to win after running its opponent
out of resources. It uses efficient removal spells and armor to survive, and then
gradually takes over the game. It then has multiple ways to press home its advantage
in resources in the late game. Against heavy control decks, this deck has also enough
midrange threats to play the aggressive role effectively.

During the early turns, you will be concentrating almost entirely on removal. Your
weapons, Fiery War Axe and Death's Bite, will enable you to keep control
of the smaller minions on the opposing board, while Execute will help you
kill a large minion in case of emergency. When using these weapons, you will want
to Armor Up after attacking a minion, rather than before, as your armor fuels your
Shield Slams in the mid game. This will enable you to kill large threats,
while still retaining Mana to develop your board. The same principle applies to Bash.
It is also important to value your Weapon charges and resources. You do not have to immediately
react to every minion your opponent plays with a swing of your weapon, as your life total
is a resource in this deck and it should be used as such. Holding back on a weapon swing and taking a
bit of extra damage can be beneficial if you are looking to set up a Brawl on a future turn
or are holding an Execute that can be activated in the future with your
Death's Bite swing.

Unless you have a Ravaging Ghoul, Bash will often be your turn three play in this deck.
As it is one of the more expensive removal spells, you do not mind using it early
if necessary. The deck plays more minions than many other Control Warrior decks,
and so you will not always have the Mana for the Bash in the following turns, as you
will instead choose to develop a minion. You may have learned as a Control Warrior that you
should generally try and avoid using Shield Block if it prevents you from armoring up
since you do not maximise your armour gain over the course of several turns. In this deck
however, much like Bash, you will not always want to cast Shield Block over playing a minion
which means that you are free to use it to draw a card if you have the Mana available.
There are some exceptions to this however. Shield Block also has great synergy with
Shield Slam, and you will often want to hold on to the Block so that you
can use these two cards together to remove a mid sized threat. You should also
often resist playing Acolyte of Pain here too. You will want to draw at least
two cards from the Acolyte, which means you should try to play it when it is very
unlikely to die. The ideal times for this are when your opponent has minions which
cannot kill it, or you are going to play a Ravaging Ghoul, or trigger the
Deathrattle on your Death's Bite. Against more aggressive decks however, Acolyte can
be used more quickly to cycle through your deck to find better answers to their aggression,
especially since the body of Acolyte often contests the board quite effectively.

As the game progresses, this deck aims to occupy the board with efficient minions
while still removing opposing threats. At this point, your minions will aid your
spells in keeping the board clear. Piloted Shredder and Sludge Belcher
are both difficult for your opponent to get rid of and present a renewable source
of damage, or can act as removal. This will help you to not only present a strong
defense, but will also give you enough of an attacking threat that your opponent
often will not be able to ignore it. You can use these cards more liberally than most
of the cards in the deck, as you want to make sure you have used them before you
cast N'Zoth on later turns. It is worth reminding you to keep track of which Deathrattle
minions you have used, particularly Sludge Belcher. Although N'Zoth is powerful, it
is a 10 Mana card which means it can leave you exposed to aggression from your
opponent. Having a Sludge Belcher in your pool of revived minions means that you
provide yourself with a defensive wall. This takes away the all-out aggression
response which may often be your opponent's only solution to your incredible board.

At this point, you will try to find a safe turn to play Justicar Trueheart
as Tank Up is an incredibly useful Hero Power. Once you have enabled this, your
opponent will usually have to play multiple minions just to get through your
growing amount of armor. This will enable you to remove several minions at a time
using Brawl, which will often be the point at which the game swings in your
favour. If you can develop a Sylvanas Windrunner before casting Brawl you
will be guaranteed to "win" the Brawl, as the Sylvanas will steal the opposing card
should your opponent's minion survive. Despite all these upsides of Brawl, the deck
does only play 1. The reasons for this are that since the deck is very proactive in terms of its own minion presence, you
will usually be able to contest the board with minions of your own, which makes Brawl
less valuable. On top of this, Wild format is much more densely populated by Deathrattle
effects, which means Brawl is less destructive overall.

You will want to keep an eye on your opponent's hand size. Over time, you
should find that you are getting ahead of them. This is especially true if you
have managed your Acolyte of Pain correctly. When you get to the point
where you have more cards than your opponent, you can start to allocate your
Executes and Shield Slams more greedily, waiting for their one
last push. You should also try to weave in your Armor Up as often as realistically
possible. Over the course of a game, this can lead to a huge gain of armor, and
be the difference between winning and losing.

If you have got through these stages, you are now likely in position to take over
the game. You can use Dr. Boom as a big threat to get through your opponent's
final resources, and this will clear the way for your N'Zoth, the Corruptor.
N'Zoth usually wins the game when cast as long as you have set it up correctly.
It brings back your Sludge Belchers, Sylvanas, Shredders and even Boom Bots, and
this will generally be overwhelming to deal with. You usually will not need to bring
back many cards to win the game, although if you are very low on life, be sure to
check that at least one Sludge Belcher will be returned to the battlefield
as a little insurance. Knowledge of your opponent's deck is important here. If your
opponent is likely to have cards such as Brawl, Twisting Nether,
or Equality in their deck, then you will need to try and bait these cards out
from your opponent in order to make sure your N'Zoth is as devastating as possible.
There will be situations however where due to all the Deathrattle effects themselves
your board is suitably resilient against even these powerful AoE spells, in which
case you can do ahead and commit your win-condition to the board.

Grommash Hellscream is a card that is often regarded as a finisher in
Warrior decks. However, since this deck has a method of winning the game through
total board dominance you are free to use Grommash more liberally as a removal option to
try and stall the game until your all important turn 10. This is especially true against
decks that do not play powerful AoE options to try and answer your N'Zoth boards. Against
decks that can potentially have strong answers to your Deathrattle boards, holding on
to Grommash can be necessary in order to finish out the game with one last push after
they have removed a reasonable amount of your board.

Armorsmith can often be used with Ravaging Ghoul to gain a few
extra armor to put you out of range of aggressive decks. Double Armorsmith can often
gain a huge amount of armor, especially with a Ravaging Ghoul, which is enough to win a game.

Brawl with Sylvanas Windrunner on the board means that you will
steal the remaining opposing minion if you lose the Brawl.

3.2. Mulligans & Matchup Specific Strategies

Fiery War Axe is one of the most powerful early game cards in all of Hearthstone.
You will want to keep this in virtually every matchup. Death's Bite is also a
key card that you will keep. Not only does it control the board for you, but it interacts
positively with many cards in your deck.

Against aggressive decks, you will often throw away your whole hand to get the maximum
chance of drawing Fiery War Axe. The one exception is that you will keep Death's Bite.
If you already have a War Axe then cards such as Slam, Bash, and Ravaging Ghoul become
far better and can be kept alongside it. If you believe that your opponent is playing lots of
1-Health minions. or minions with Divine Shields, you will also look to give
Ravaging Ghoul, and Armorsmith a much higher priority.

Against control decks, you will want to keep midrange threats. You can keep
Piloted Shredder and Sludge Belcher to ensure that your opponent is on
the defensive early. In matchups that seem likely to go to fatigue, you will also want to
find Justicar Trueheart as quickly as possible.